21 producers of alcoholic beverages caught using forged excise stamps

Twenty-one producers of strong alcoholic drinks used counterfeit excise stamps on the products they supplied on the home market. The Ministry of the Interior identified them during the inspections carried out over the last three months, Info-Prim Neo reports. There were found over 17,000 bottles with forged excise stamps, Police Colonel Vitalie Briceag told a news conference on Wednesday. The products were seized. The place where the excise stamps were made has not been yet established. The inspections were initiated after a vehicle carrying 52,000 forged excise stamps hidden in the reservoir was stopped last December on the Bender – Anenii Noi road. A criminal case was started over this case. According to the head of the Ministry of the Interior’s press office Eugen Onica, most of the offenses concerning the forging of excise stamps appeared after the fiscal legislation was amended and the excise duties were increased. The counterfeit stamps discovered by the police are of a high quality and the non-specialists cannot identify them.